Mitsuwa! Ramen & Custard

On my way to a Phil Wickham & Shane & Shane concert, we stopped at Mitsuwa to get some Ramen & other snacks.  Mitsuwa is probably one of the best places to get the most authentic Japanese food (besides St. Marks).  Anyway, it’s not really a place you’d venture to if you live in the city (because why would you? You’d just end up going to St Marks!  Ha!) BUT, if you live in Queens, Jersey, Staten Island, Brooklyn…. I suggest checking Mitsuwa out.  My friends seem to love it so much that they go there every other week… haha. Inside Mitsuwa, consists mostly as a supermarket, with a few bakeries and restaurants on the side.  Every year they have Japanese festivals as well and they bring the “taste of Japan” to the Jersey shores.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite spots inside the “largest Japanese supermarket in the US” (according to their website, haha)

First we have my ULTIMATE snack, a custard bun.  It’s a delicate blend of salty dough stuffed with an amazing warm creme filling.  This is my favorite part of Mitsuwa– and the only reason you can get me to go.  Everytime my friends pass by, I always order a custard bun!!

Now onto the real food…this is the Ramen shop we got our food at:

This is Alan’s dish.  He got some type of rice with an omelet and fried pork (?) and a side of soba noodles (cold buckwheat noodles- one of my not-favorite foods) He looks quite happy to be eating.

This is my dish. It is a toriniku-ramen, and a half shredded beef dish (shared with Jed).  The noodles in the ramen are delicious, bounces in your mouth and sturdy- I personally hate soggy noodles, so this one is solid.  My only complain on this dish is that it was super-super- salty.  Some may say,” well that’s RAMEN”- — ehh but I disagree.  It was so salty that I had to pour a cup of water into the soup it make it a bit more edible… but overall, it’s good stuff.   I used to hate Japanese food.  Used to never liked Ramen and I (even now) cannot stomach any sashimi.  I even hated it when I studied abroad in Japan, and all I hate was pork over rice.  But more and more I have been seeing that Japanese food is really amazing.. it’s growing more and more on me.

To kill some, we decided to check out the Japanese Bookstore across the street, and of course the boys were happily distracted by these puzzle-shape-animal-japanese toys.  Basically it’s like lego’s but a little more intricate.  They all bought their own animal and built them. Mine is the panda